Anticipate or Fall Behind: The New Business Challenge

The Desafíos y Tendencias de las Empresas 2026 study by EY highlights a significant shift in the priorities facing companies across Latin America: the challenge is no longer simply understanding that markets will change, but being able to adapt at the speed those changes demand. For organizations, anticipating shifts in customer behavior, technology and the broader business environment is becoming increasingly important to remain competitive.

By Jaime Bonilla, Senior Manager at EY-Parthenon

The speed of change is redefining competitiveness

For years, many organizations built their competitiveness around doing what they already did better: optimizing costs, improving processes and increasing efficiency. Those capabilities remain relevant, but companies now face another requirement: understanding customers earlier, identifying new ways to compete and making decisions faster.

According to the EY study, the main external challenge for organizations in the region is increasingly related to their ability to understand and respond to changes in demand, preferences and customer behavior.

Adaptation, therefore, is moving from being an advantage to becoming a condition for competition.

The broader environment also includes the economic and geopolitical relationship between the United States and China. Across Latin America, 43% of companies believe its short-term impact on their business will be neutral, while 34% anticipate a positive or very positive effect and 24% expect a negative or very negative impact.

The diversity of these perspectives reinforces the importance of assessing how each organization is exposed to economic, technological and geopolitical changes.

Technology has become a business priority

Technology is no longer a conversation limited to the IT department. It has become a business discussion.

The EY study shows that 42% of companies identify technology and digital transformation as their main internal challenge. Process automation follows with 28%, while market share growth and operational, productivity and cost improvements each account for 27%.

This reflects a broader transformation in how companies approach technology. Organizations are investing in and experimenting with new tools, while many are still determining how to scale those technologies in ways that can generate sustainable results.

The challenge is not simply adopting technology. It is understanding how technology can address specific business needs.

Artificial intelligence is changing the next stage of transformation

Among the technologies expected to have the greatest impact in the coming years, artificial intelligence leads with 87% of responses. Analytics and Big Data, as well as intelligent automation, robotics and cyber-physical systems, each reach 81%.

At the same time, 81% of companies in the region are still in the research, pilot or specific implementation stages of artificial intelligence.

This changes the question companies need to ask. The issue is no longer whether organizations should experiment with AI, but how those experiments can become capabilities that generate value across the organization.

A tool can automate a task. Strategy determines which task is worth automating.

A system can process large amounts of information. Leadership determines which decisions should be made with that information.

And an artificial intelligence solution can generate efficiencies. The organization must determine where those efficiencies can translate into growth, better service, innovation or a different customer experience.

The transformation begins when technology stops being the objective and becomes a means of solving concrete business problems.

Growth also requires trust and protection

Another finding from the study deserves particular attention. Cybersecurity and data protection rank first among the trends expected to shape companies, with 89%, followed by accelerated digital transformation at 87% and data as a cross-functional asset at 84%.

These priorities create an additional responsibility for business leaders: growing with trust.

Speed matters, but so does the ability to protect information, maintain operations and build reliable relationships with customers and partners.

As companies accelerate their adoption of technology and artificial intelligence, these elements become part of the broader challenge of transformation.

A changing business landscape in Central America and the Caribbean

The priorities identified in the study are also particularly relevant in Central America and the Caribbean, where technology and digital transformation represent, by a wide margin, one of the main internal challenges identified by executives.

Process automation ranks second, placing technological challenges in the two leading positions among the business priorities identified for the bloc analyzed.

These findings point to an environment in which organizations are simultaneously seeking to transform, invest in technology, strengthen productivity and take advantage of artificial intelligence.

The next step is connecting those priorities with concrete business decisions.

From uncertainty to opportunity

The companies in our region have an important opportunity ahead. The data shows interest in transformation, technology investment, productivity and artificial intelligence. The challenge is turning those priorities into actions that respond to specific business needs.

Companies that understand this transition can use uncertainty as an opportunity for growth. Those that wait until change becomes evident to everyone risk reacting after others have already moved forward.

The question, therefore, is no longer whether the market will change, but whether organizations will be able to change at the same speed.

The Desafíos y Tendencias de las Empresas 2026 study reflects this shift through the perspectives of 1,988 executives and directors from more than 18 countries in Latin America, identifying a significant change in business priorities.